Surman revels in 'massive' Saints win

England Under-21 international Andrew Surman described Southampton's 1-0 win over Cardiff as 'massive', with the result meaning that the Saints have now won back-to-back games for the first time since September.

Speaking to the club's official website, Surman said, "It's a massive win. Obviously all the games until the end of the season are big, but with the other teams around us winning as well, it was important that we won but it was also key to get back-to-back wins at home too.

"We knew the importance of it today and our plan of getting on top of teams early is working as we try to get ourselves out of trouble. If we do the important stuff first then our quality will allow us to do the rest and that's what happened today," the midfielder added.

"You could see that the confidence was there in our performance and as the game wore on we grew."

David McGoldrick's 11th minute penalty proved to be the decisive goal, and Surman, who is on the potential list of spot-kick takers, praised the front man for his effort.

"David was full of confidence and showed great character to step up and score an important goal. We've just said that if you don't feel comfortable or if you've taken a knock then don't take a penalty, so full credit to him today."

The importance of a second successive home win was not lost on Saints' number 11, and Surman admitted that the players have been using that incentive as preparation during the week.

"We'd been talking about back-to-back wins during the week because it's a great starting point for us to go on a run which is important for us.

"We want to try and make this place a fortress because that's how it should be anyway. You need to do it in your home games and we need to win as many of them as we can and make sure that teams find it difficult when they come here to play us.

"As long as everyone keeps working as hard as they can then we will continue to do OK, we can't take our foot off the pedal. We've shown that we can battle our way through games and not get pushed out of matches."

At full-time, Head Coach Mark Wotte came onto the pitch and got the players together in a group, and Surman has revealed what was said.

"Mark Wotte pulled us together at the end on the pitch and said 'back-to-back wins!' and kept the good feeling going. I think that helps to show that everyone is pulling together in the same direction.

"Young players need confidence and you get that through winning games, so today has given us a massive boost so hopefully we will now kick on again on Tuesday."

Surman insists that Saints won't get carried away by another win, but he believes that the team will continue to focus purely on their own fortunes for the time being.

"There are still alot of teams above us than can get dragged into it so we just have to concentrate on ourselves and know that if we win then we will be OK because other teams will slip up.

"Doncaster have shown that they can do it so we want to follow in their footsteps and continue to try and push ourselves up the league. It's still one game at a time though and that's the way we have to approach it until the end of the season."

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